1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing method, and more particularly to a method of repairing scratches in digital images.
2. Related Art
As digital technology progresses, the way to process images has significantly changed. Much more information can be processed, stored and transmitted digitally. The digital images are formed by means of digital cameras or image scanners, or directly generated by drawing software applications. The quality of digital images is based on the quality of the image originals and the quality of the used input/output equipment. Good performance of the input equipment greatly influences the quality of the acquired image.
The image original, which may be for example, a document sheet, may be scratched or damaged by dust or fine particles. Therefore, the acquired digital image usually needs to be repaired to recover its intact appearance.
Currently, repairing images is mainly performed on films, for example, an ‘automatic scratch remover’, which is a new technology in the scanning art. A film scanner is a high level electronic image-related product that needs advanced photoelectric technology and high production quality.
In the present state of the art, scratches are found by hardware, resulting in non-satisfactory repairing with high processing costs. Applications such as PHOTOSHOP repair the damaged image on the film with a complicated operation and are substantially time-consuming. Usually it takes several hours to repair a fine scratch. Such an image repair process is not efficient.
Furthermore, the method of processing scratches in the digital image includes finding out where the scratches are located, and repairing them. Presently, localization of the scratches is more difficult than repairing the scratches. Therefore, there is a need for a method of repairing scratches in digital images, which can precisely locate the scratches.